Whenever I write about Christian history, I have a habit of writing with my former evangelical Christian self as my projected audience. It’s like I’m trying to save myself all over again from the frustration I experienced, especially in college, whenever I carried insights from my religion courses like small offerings into my Bible studies only to have them gently rejected.

That’s not to say my efforts weren’t appreciated. A couple years after I graduated, an old classmate asked me, “Are you still Christian?” When I responded, “I don’t think I am,” she said, “That’s too bad. You were my model of a thoughtful Christian.”

Maybe I linger with my old self, that thoughtful but naïve Christian, because of that conversation. Aren’t we all continuously responding to our old selves, justifying why we left them behind even as we use them as foils for our evolving identities? It doesn’t have to be that deep, of course. Sans analysis of any inner psychosis, there’s an obvious reason I write for her: I know she cared about Christian history. Her relationship with God was deepened by it. So was her sense of connection to the stories that had shaped her over her childhood. For a while at least, historical knowledge prevented spiritual burn-out. Sermons were becoming predictable and sometimes embarrassing, but books of early Christian history were guaranteed to offer nuances she had never heard from her small-town pastors, who, to be fair, had to worry about the repercussions of going too deep themselves.

That leads to another person I write for, the disillusioned member of the Christian alumni association, who delves into the history with a defensive goal in mind: “What did I miss, and how did I miss it? How can I respond to my relative/friend/former pastor when she or he asks why I wasn’t at church? What can be salvaged from what I've lost?” In those first days, months, and years after leaving, she’s the person who would drop her latest book onto the table with too much force and think, How could I have been so stupid? Or else, Why won’t you—my friend, my family, my enemy—at least hear me out on what I’ve learned? Christian history, for her, was a salve.

There’s a third person now, still in formation—the post-Christian. Immersed in an ocean of philosophies of life including but not limited to various forms of Christianity, lapsing only sporadically into old modes of thought but still sometimes lured to listen to Christian radio for nostalgic reasons, she reads Christian history with the sense that she is peering into an alien world. Like a good researcher, she senses the vastness of what she doesn’t know. Curiosity drives her, not personal salvation. Who were the people who wrote those texts? What did they think of themselves and the world around them? The sheer humanness of the texts bleeds through in a way it couldn’t when they were protected by a sacred sheen.

I remember and own each of these selves, who has cared about Christian history for different reasons over a lifetime, but these are hardly the only people who care. Who else do you see in the crowd?

Cassandra Farrin joined Westar in 2010 and currently serves as the Marketing & Outreach Director. A US-UK Fulbright Scholar, she has an M.A. in Religious Studies from Lancaster University (England) and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Willamette University. She is passionate about books and projects that in some way address the intersection of ethics and early Christian history.

Sullied by unjust and even hateful usage over the years, the Bible is a book under fire. "Look at all the ignorance and cruelty in these pages," cry its critics, with plenty of evidence at hand to prove their point. "The Bible kills our babies (real and figurative) and never apologizes for it!"

To read the Bible, to like it, to care for it have become reasons to blush. Too many awkward conversations result from cracking it open in public. One feels the urge to fold brown paper over the cover before carrying it onto trains, planes, and buses. At the very least, it seems prudent to carry it with another book, preferably something like David Sedaris' Let's Talk about Diabetes with Owls—anything that suggests you are not a closed-minded bigot.

I promise this is not the opening gambit in a missionary's spiel. I'm not here to tell you to get right with God, but I am rethinking my relationship with the collected legends, poetry, proverbs, letters, and stories that were so dear to me before my college religious studies courses left me feeling betrayed by them. It turns out Moses never parted the Red Sea, we know next to nothing about the historical Jesus, and Paul probably didn't write Ephesians, one of my favorite books of the Bible.

I'm grateful to my teachers for trusting in my intelligence, but oh man, what a letdown.

I ended up swapping my love of the Bible for a love of the history of the Bible. I did feel it was necessary to choose. And from day one of Elementary Hebrew, did I ever fall madly in love with the history of the Bible! It was love of the sort that put me in the company of Marianne Dashwood from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. I was pretty sure it would kill me. Melodramatic? Yes. But you have to understand that I read the Bible all the time. Even the smallest helping of the history behind it was like leaning too far over deep water.

Harvard professor Harvey Cox knows the feeling. In his new book How to Read the Bible, he uses the word "vivisection" to describe that dreadful but wonderful awakening. For better or for worse, I happen to own a book on the history of medical experimentation. The authors couldn't help themselves; they filled their rather slim volume with enough vintage sketches of vivisection to shock unsuspecting readers by the page. Crowds of onlookers stare with expressions somewhere between lust and horror as, on a stage fitted with an operating table and a rack of what look like the instruments of torture rather than healing, doctors cut open live dogs, pigs, and even human criminals, all in the pursuit of scientific truth. If I was Marianne Dashwood, it seems Harvey Cox was the pale attendant looking over the doctor's shoulder.

Thankfully, the story does not end here. The Bible need not remain the condemned criminal and untrue lover in our newly dystopian state. There is hope. Cox draws upon a lifetime of study to assure us that it's okay to still be moved by the Bible. The Bible can survive our scrutiny. We can read it with care and common sense at the same time.

To accomplish this, Cox modifies the guidance he received long ago from his friend and colleague, the late Krister Stendahl. Stendahl taught Cox to take a two-pronged approach to the Bible.

The two great questions about any Bible passage are, "What did it mean then?" and "What does it mean now?" ... The "What did it mean then?" obviously fell in the realm of biblical studies. The "What does it mean now?" question belongs to Bible study, preaching, and spiritual formation.

As Cox tried to put this into practice, he found it was never so tidy. The two questions tangled and tussled and never quite stayed apart. "More and more today," he tells us, "thoughtful historians, including those in biblical studies, know that complete 'objectivity' was never obtainable and was always probably undesirable." In place of that, he encourages us to read with "a candid awareness of one's personal objective." We read for a reason, not the reason.

How do we do this? Cox advises us to read in three stages:

Read the text as a story, fully absorbed in the drama and emotions as with any literary work.

Become an amateur detective of history and uncover the "who, when, where and why" of a text.

Engage the text in a spiritual "no holds barred wrestling match." Be ready to change but willing to argue with what you find.

Throughout the book Cox shows readers, over and over again, how this approach can enrich our reading of the Bible. I found the chapter on Job especially moving, not to mention startlingly relevant to my life.

Has Cox convinced me to read my Bible in public again? Yes, I believe he has. I have been reminded of what it was like to relate with the people of Bible—in the stories, behind them, around them. I feel I have been given tacit permission to talk about both what I cherish and what goads me.

One thing I will not do: oversimplify.

Cassandra Farrinjoined Westar in 2010 and currently serves as the Marketing & Outreach Director. A US-UK Fulbright Scholar, she has an M.A. in Religious Studies from Lancaster University (England) and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Willamette University. She is passionate about books and projects that in some way address the intersection of ethics and early Christian history.

Back when I was asking Google how the Bible was written, I stumbled across a variety of supposedly “chronological” reading plans for the Bible. Nearly all of them were pious lists that emphasized reading in an order that reinforces a particular theology. They purposefully carry you through the texts in a way that suggests a certain view of Jesus, a view that would change if you simply read the texts in a different order.

Since the word “chronological” in that sense has absolutely nothing to do with when the original texts were written, I thought I’d offer an alternative: a 30-day plan for how to read Paul’s letters chronologically. But first: an explanation.

The late Marcus Borg urged us to read the New Testament in the order in which the books were actually written rather than the order in which they appear in modern Bibles. We should start with the letters of Paul because they are our earliest texts from the Christ movement. Don't read Acts, don't read the gospels. Save those for later. Paul's letters came first.

Although many letters in the New Testament are claimed to have been written by Paul, most scholars who have studied them have reached the conclusion that only seven of the letters were actually written by Paul when he lived in the early 1st century, around 20 to 30 years after the death of Jesus. Where did the other letters come from? They were written by other people in Paul’s name in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries. "Beginning with seven of Paul's letters," Borg writes,

illustrates that there were vibrant Christian communities spread throughout the Roman Empire before there were written Gospels. His letters provide a "window" into the life of very early Christian communities.

The seven authentic or “undisputed” letters of Paul, in roughly chronological order, are as follows:

By far the easiest way I’ve found to read these letters in chronological order is to read The Authentic Letters of Paul (Dewey et al), which not only puts the letters in chronological order but also grapples with places where others may have edited and rearranged the letters, and/or added new material.

Full disclosure: I was involved, albeit only slightly, in the editing process of this book, but I truly have yet to encounter another book that refuses to pull punches on this issue. Why should it be difficult to find Paul’s letters arranged in some sort of chronological order? It shouldn’t be. This sort of resource is the work of good historians, and that’s what I appreciate about it. They took a risk and put an answer out there. I'd have loved to take a New Testament class that gave me a couple attempts like this and asked me to compare the portraits of Paul that emerged.

Related Resource: Listen to a free 2-part interview with the authors and translators of The Authentic Letters of Paul with Ron Way on AuthorTalk Radio.

Have you been meaning to read (or re-read) Paul's letters? We'll be hosting a 30-day challenge here on the Westar blog. How to participate.

Read Paul's Letters Chronologically

This reading plan should get you through the seven authentic letters of Paul in 30 days based on The Authentic Letters of Paul. That's a pretty intense reading schedule, given that Paul's arguments can be a real pain to follow. You may find that you want to slow the pace down to 60 days instead (which you can accomplish by reading 1 to 2 chapters a day instead of 2 to 3).

If you try it, let me know how it worked for you! What sort of Paul did you discover? Did you reach the same conclusions as Bernard Brandon Scott? Do you know of other attempts to arrange Paul's letters chronologically?

Day 1: 1 Thessalonians 1–3

Day 2: 1 Thessalonians 4–5

Day 3: Galatians 1–2

Day 4: Galatians 3–4

Day 5: Galatians 5–6

Day 6: 1 Corinthians 1–2

Day 7: 1 Corinthians 3–4There are likely some insertions from other writers mixed in

Day 8: 1 Corinthians 5–6

Day 9: 1 Corinthians 7–8

Day 10: 1 Corinthians 9–10

Day 11: 1 Corinthians 11–12There are likely some insertions from other writers mixed in

Day 12: 1 Corinthians 13–14There are likely some insertions from other writers mixed in

Day 26: Romans 4–6There are likely some insertions from other writers mixed in

Day 27: Romans 7–9

Day 28: Romans 10–12

Day 29: Romans 13–15There are likely some insertions from other writers mixed in

Day 30: Romans 16 Letter of RecommendationThere are likely some insertions from other writers mixed in

6/3/2015 12:00 pm update: A couple gracious readers have reminded me that, of course, Marcus Borg himself published a chronological reading of the New Testament in 2012, a couple years after The Authentic Letters. He uses the NRSV translation, and he places Philemon and Philippians before 2 Corinthians.

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Cassandra Farrinjoined Westar in 2010 and currently serves as the Marketing & Outreach Director. A US-UK Fulbright Scholar, she has an M.A. in Religious Studies from Lancaster University (England) and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Willamette University. She is passionate about books and projects that in some way address the intersection of ethics and early Christian history.

Google helpfully recites the opening paragraph of the article from Bible.org (result #7). Thanks, Google. While we could immediately start reading the sites offered up to us, it would be smart to get an idea of how reliable and helpful they actually will be. The common-sense question we might ask, then, is, “Who are the people who run these sites?” (In case you were wondering, I didn’t ask Google this one; I looked up the sites myself.)

Google's Top Results for "How was the Bible Written"

Faith-based sites, with a strong trend toward biblical literalism

Truthnet.org “is a group of people who are involved in letting the world know about the exclusive truth found and expressed in the teachings of the Bible.”

Everystudent.com “is a safe place to explore questions about who God is and what it might be like to know God.”

Biblica.com is “passionate about reading the Bible well so we can live it well. For over 200 years, we’ve helped millions of people access and experience God’s Word, so it can transform their lives.”

Bible.org—Google’s favorite to read aloud—exists “to freely share the good news from God to the entire world so you can KNOW the Truth about life and eternity.”

Wikipedia.org—do I even need to tell you?—is “a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on a model of openly editable content.”

PBS.org is “America’s largest classroom, the nation’s largest stage for the arts and a trusted window to the world.”

Newsweek “is a premier news magazine and website, bringing high-quality journalism to readers around the globe for over 80 years. Newsweek provides the latest news, in-depth analysis and ideas about international issues, technology, business, culture and politics.”

“Tailored for smart, curious, socially aware readers, The New Republic covers politics, culture and big ideas from an unbiased and thought-provoking perspective.” (Could possibly be placed with Bible Odyssey below?)

Academic and nonpartisan sites

BibleOdyssey.org is a project of the Society of Biblical Literature, “the oldest and largest learned society devoted to the critical investigation of the Bible based on the Humanities’ core disciplines.”

How do these sites fare in answering the actual question we posed?

For the sake of time and space, I’ll stick to one example from each of the groups above.

Truth.net. This turns out to be an apologetic defense of the inerrancy of scripture, specifically the Old Testament, based on the fact that people in ancient times did write stuff down (i.e., it’s not all oral tradition). It speaks generically of “critics who attack the Bible,” and names only one ostensible critic, Julius Wellhausen, who died in 1918. It never actually quotes or adequately summarizes Wellhausen about his Documentary Hypothesis but instead quotes a critic of Wellhausen. It’s possible to be a biblical literalist without being so generic in one’s criticism of alternative views.

What’s going for it:

It acknowledges that people might “agree on the inspiration of the Bible” even if they don’t agree on how it was written. Perhaps this allows for variety of opinion at least within circles that embrace biblical literalism?

It challenges oversimplified claims that “nobody could write” in the ancient world. One wonders if any credible scholar actually holds quite this simplistic a view, but I can at least imagine a conversation taking this turn in the local pub.

What it needs:

up-to-date information (a lot has changed since 1918!)

a more charitable treatment of opposing views instead of putting up an oversimplified version of Wellhausen’s argument as a “straw man” that presents no real challenge

awareness that the existence of writing in ancient times has little bearing on the documentary hypothesis, which could just as easily describe the blending of multiple written as multiple oral traditions (indeed, it was likely a mix of both!) into the Bible

PBS.org. This is a nice follow-up on the article above because it also begins with oral transmission and the written word, but it tells a more complex story of the transition from mostly oral to mostly written culture while observing that even into the Second Temple period (530 B.C.–A.D. 130) and beyond, “a fierce ideology of orality would persist in rabbinic Judaism.” It also includes information about the Christian New Testament as a natural outgrowth of the same forces that shaped rabbinic Judaism.

What’s going for it:

It tells a complex story about oral and written tradition rather than an oversimplified claim.

It includes the Christian New Testament without treating Christianity as a wholly separate phenomenon from Judaism.

It shows awareness that modern readers may not share the worldview of ancient readers.

The name and credentials of the author are included.

What it needs:

acknowledgement of a wider conversation and diversity of views about this subject, without necessarily having to go in depth about those views

better coverage of how both Judaism and Christianity came to “close” their canons

BibleOdyssey.org. This article begins in what strikes me at least as a more natural starting point: that “Bible” means “library.” Oral versus written transmission is covered, but is not the primary thrust of the article. Rather, this article explains a bit about canonization, including taking the time to define it as the “process of including certain books as Scripture and rejecting others.” This article also describes how scribes physically copied texts and why not all manuscripts of the Bible are exactly the same.

What’s going for it:

It does not overemphasize oral versus written tradition, which was only one factor among many in the development of the Bible.

It defines terms and doesn’t overwhelm the reader with details.

It makes very clear that there is no one Bible or biblical text. Variety exists across canons based on the concerns of particular communities.

The name and credentials of the author are included.

What it needs:

frankly, even though this article offers a more well-rounded response to our actual question, it doesn’t have much “curb appeal” compared to most of the other sites on Google’s top list

links to more information (although the “ask a scholar” option helps), especially given how much competing responses to this question offer by comparison

like the article above, it does not really imply wider conversations about this subject or alert the reader to interesting points of dispute

You Got Me, Google

From cringe-worthy statements like this opening line from EveryStudent.org—“unlike other religious writings, the Bible reads as a factual news account of real events, places, people, and dialogue”—to perhaps overly harsh accusations against biblical literalism like this one on an otherwise interesting NewsWeek article—“they are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians who pick and choose which Bible verses they heed with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch”—it is clear that asking Google about how the Bible was written opens a raw spot in the Western psyche. Is Google, like a good psychiatrist, probing our reasons for asking the question? Have we revealed our cards unexpectedly to the algorithms that impassively map the emotional turmoil spurred by our favorite text to love and hate? This is one historical question for which a straightforward historical answer may never be good enough.

Shameless plug: we’ll be talking about this pain point at the next national meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, with Harvey Cox, author of the brand new book How to Read the Bible. Why not join us?

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Cassandra Farrin joined Westar in 2010 and currently serves as the Marketing & Outreach Director. A US-UK Fulbright Scholar, she has an M.A. in Religious Studies from Lancaster University (England) and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Willamette University. She is passionate about books and projects that in some way address the intersection of ethics and early Christian history.